CRITICAL RACE THEORY IN PRACTICE

Civil rights groups accuse conservatives of recasting landmark Brown v. Board ruling on 70th anniversary

John Fritze, CNN
Fri, 17 May 2024 

Seventy years after the Supreme Court acknowledged that “separate but equal” had no place in the United States, one of history’s most celebrated legal opinions is being used by conservative groups to challenge race-related policies in schools across the country.

In a remarkable demonstration of the Supreme Court’s power to shape American life, the 1954 unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education required the integration of public schools – a landmark victory for the civil rights movement. The high court handed down its decision 70 years ago Friday.

Speaking in Texas last week, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh described the decision as one of several that are now part of the “fabric of America.”

But a conflict over the decision’s meaning is playing out in a series of lawsuits challenging efforts to foster classroom diversity, in which conservative groups are arguing that Brown requires schools and government programs to be totally colorblind.

Civil rights groups say that recasts a decision that was intended to rectify the nation’s history with racism.

“Brown is being weaponized against the very people it was intended to directly serve,” Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told CNN. “And that is largely a result of the Supreme Court never giving the 14th Amendment the full and robust interpretation that is required to sustain a multiracial democracy.”

Meanwhile, experts note that many of the nation’s schools remain deeply segregated.

“Not only has Brown failed to deliver on its promise, right-wing groups have co-opted Brown and turned it into a sword to discredit efforts to integrate our schools,” said Jonathan Feingold, a Boston University law professor and expert on affirmative action and antidiscrimination law. “As a country, we seem to have accepted a status quo in which Black and brown students, and many Asian American students, do not receive equal educational opportunities.”
Conservative groups push a ‘colorblind’ reading

The current Supreme Court reenergized that debate last year with a blockbuster decision ending affirmative action in college admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The meaning of Brown was hotly contested in that case, and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority said in its decision that the precedent stood for all but eliminating the consideration of race.

“The conclusion reached by the Brown Court was thus unmistakably clear: the right to a public education ‘must be made available to all on equal terms,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority in the UNC opinion. “The time for making distinctions based on race had passed.”

Led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s liberal wing disputed that reading.

“In Brown v. Board of Education, the court recognized the constitutional necessity of racially integrated schools in light of the harm inflicted by segregation,” Sotomayor wrote in a scathing dissent. “Today, this court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”

Inside a classroom at Monroe Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas in March 1953. Among the students are Linda Brown, bottom right, and her sister Terry Lynn, far left row, second from front, who, with their parents, initiated the Brown v. Board of Education. - Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images

Though the fight over race-conscious admissions was settled, the court’s decision in the Harvard case and the debate over color-blind versus race-conscience policies have emerged in a series of other lawsuits, such as challenges to workplace diversity programs and recent fights over redistricting. Schools and conservative groups, meanwhile, are also sparring in court over policies that promote student diversity without relying directly on race.

Students for Fair Admissions, the group that successfully sued over admissions at Harvard and UNC, is now challenging the University of Texas at Austin for its policy of collecting racial data of applicants. In a filing earlier this year, the group claimed the Supreme Court’s decision last year on college admissions “built on Brown’s legacy” and required courts to view the Constitution as requiring a “color-blind” approach.

“Brown v. Board was perhaps the most consequential Supreme Court opinion in the last one-hundred years,” the group’s president, Edward Blum, told CNN in a statement. “For a significant majority of Americans of all races, this case established the doctrine of ‘colorblind’ public policies to which all levels of government must adhere.”

The university has said it doesn’t use the racial data to make decisions about applicants.

The libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation has challenged an elite Virginia high school’s proposal to accept a set number of students from each of the county’s middle schools. Parents represented by the group sued the Fairfax County, Virginia, school board in 2021, alleging its policy violated the Constitution by seeking to balance the student body’s racial makeup at the expense of Asian Americans.

A federal appeals court in Richmond disagreed. The Supreme Court in February declined to hear that case.

But similar cases are already on the way.

The group has another appeal challenging admissions practices at three selective public schools in Boston that currently is pending at the Supreme Court. That appeal cites Brown v. Board in a footnote, asserting that the justices have “struggled with cases involving racial discrimination in education” for more than a century.
School segregation up in large districts, study finds

Anastasia Boden, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, said that Brown was an important step in ensuring that Americans aren’t treated differently based on their race.

“Fulfilling Brown’s promise means ending discrimination in all of its forms, including modern forms, whereby schools pass new admissions policy for the explicit purpose of ‘racial balancing,’” she said. “The consequence of racial balancing in schools is excluding some students – usually Asian students – solely because of their race.”

But the goal of Brown was never “equal representation,” she said. “It was equal treatment based on race and the elimination of racial discrimination in the law.”

Civil rights groups say that argument misreads the history and meaning of the seminal decision.

David Hinojosa, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, argued in favor of affirmative action in the UNC case before the Supreme Court in 2022. Hinojosa, who represented students and alumni, described Brown as an attempt to “shut down this nation’s terrible caste system,” not turn a blind eye toward it.

Proponents for affirmative action in higher education rally in front of the US Supreme Court before oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina on October 31, 2022 in Washington, DC. - Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMore

“I didn’t think the Supreme Court would go as far as it did,” Hinojosa said, referring to the college admissions case. “For a majority to suggest that Brown v. Board supports the exclusion of highly qualified brown and Black students … is a travesty.”

A product of Chief Justice Earl Warren’s court, both sides agree Brown v. Board was a monumentally important win for civil rights – though it took years, subsequent appeals and military intervention by President Dwight Eisenhower to begin to carry it out.

During confirmation hearings for both Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, senators needled the then-nominees about whether Brown is settled law. They did so in an effort to highlight distinctions between how former President Donald Trump’s nominees described Brown compared with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion and that the court overturned in 2022.

Kavanaugh, during his 2018 hearings, repeatedly described Brown as the “greatest moment in Supreme Court history.” Barrett noted that she had previously said in writing that Brown “was correct as an original matter.”

And yet the Brown ruling also underscored the limits of the Supreme Court’s power. Though public schools are no longer segregated by law, they have also never been fully integrated. Racial segregation has increased 64% since 1988 in the nation’s 100 largest school districts, according to a study this month from Stanford University and the University of Southern California. The study’s authors pinned the increase on school districts that have been released from court-ordered desegregation plans and an increase in school choice programs.

Advocates such as Hinojosa say the numbers reflect precisely what Brown sought to avoid.

Now, Hinojosa said, the decision is being used by “anti-civil rights groups to further segregate schools.”


Biden commemorates 70th anniversary of Brown v Board with continued appeal to Black voters

Associated Press Videos
Updated Fri, 17 May 2024



President Biden on Friday commemorated the 70th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that ended segregation in public schools.

“Seventy years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, a prayer was answered in the long struggle for freedom,” said Biden, speaking from the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

He reflected on meeting Thursday with members of the Little Rock Nine and how what they endured in 1957 wasn’t all that long ago, pointing out there is still room for progress.

“We have a whole group of people out there trying to rewrite history, trying to erase history,” Biden said.

Since 2021, at least 18 states have imposed bans or restrictions on teaching topics of race and gender, according to a report by Education Week.

During the 2022-23 school year, 153 districts across 33 states banned books, according to a report by PEN America, many of which were written by authors of color and delve into topics including race and racism.

The Biden-Harris administration this week announced new steps toward achieving educational equity, including investing $20 million in new awards for school districts in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas to establish magnet programs.

The administration is also launching an interagency process to preserve African American history.

“The Brown decision proves a simple idea: We learn better when we learn together,” Biden said.

After he spoke, members of the Little Rock Nine addressed the crowd with Sheryl Ralph Lee.

They shared what it was like to attend school, escorted by the U.S. National Guard, as mobs of white demonstrators screamed epithets and hung effigies as they walked past.

“They intended to hurt us,” Elizabeth Eckford said.

Racism, added Minnijean Brown Trickey, is designed to make the marginalized hurt. But because they persevered, she said, things were able to change.

“Kids can make presidents act,” Brown Trickey said. “In the end, it was our persistence that made it possible for everyone to have to advocate on our behalf.”

1 in 3 Black Americans says integration hasn’t helped Black students: Survey

Cheyanne M. Daniels
Fri, 17 May 2024 


Seventy years after the landmark Supreme Court decision to end segregation in schools, a majority of Americans believe more should be done to racially integrate schools.

A new Washington Post-Ipsos survey found that 86 percent of U.S. adults support the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. Though 90 percent of White Americans support the decision, only 80 percent of Black Americans said the same.

And while Brown v. Board led to the integration of schools, a third of Black Americans say integration has not improved the quality of education for Black students.

In fact, segregation of schools remains an issue today, though 56 percent of U.S. adults believe schools are now less racially segregated than they were 30 years ago. Thirty percent of Black Americans said there has been no change over the past 30 years.

Jalisa Evans, chief executive officer and founder of the Black Educator Advocates Network, told The Hill that as white students fled school districts to avoid integration, redlining continued to create segregated schools through housing.

“Today, schools with large numbers of Black students are underfunded,” she explained.

In December 2022, the Education Trust found that districts with the most Black, Latino, and Native American students receive significantly less state and local funding than districts with the fewest students of color.

Districts with predominantly nonwhite students, the report found, receive more than $2,000 per student less than predominantly white districts. In a district with 5,000 students, the report concluded, this would equate to $13.5 million in missing resources.

The Washington Post-Ipsos survey found that nearly 68 percent of Americans say more should be done to integrate schools. Nearly two in three White Americans say more needs to be done to integrate schools.

Though a majority of Black Americans support various proposals to reduce segregation in schools, including 79 percent who favor creating more magnet schools and 73 percent who favor redrawing school boundaries to create more diverse school districts, nearly 80 percent of white people say they support “letting students go to the local school in their community, even if it means that most of the students would be of the same race.”

Black Americans are more split, with 51 percent saying students should go to the local school even if most students would be the same race, while 45 percent said transferring students to other schools for more integration is better, even if it means travel.

NATO CONSPIRACY THEORY

Putin seeking to weaponise threat of mass migration, warns Estonian PM

Patrick Wintour in Tallinn
Fri, 17 May 2024 

Kaja Kallas: ‘The lesson from 1938 and 1939 is that if aggression pays off somewhere, it will be taken up elsewhere.’  

Photograph: Gints Ivuskans/AFP/Getty Images

Vladimir Putin is seeking to weaponise the threat of mass migration to divide and weaken Europe as supporters of Ukraine struggle to maintain unity to defeat Russia, Kaja Kallas, the Estonian prime minister, says.

“What our adversaries know is migration is our vulnerability,” she said. “The aim is to make life really impossible in Ukraine so that there would be migration pressure to Europe, and this is what they are doing.”

Speaking in Tallinn on Friday, she said Russia had already created the migration pressure through disruption in Syria and in Africa via the Wagner group.

“I think we have to understand that Russia is weaponising migration. Our adversaries are weaponising migration.

“They push the migrants over the border, and they create problems for the Europeans because they weaponise this since with human rights, you have to accept those people. And that is, of course, water to the mill of the far right.”

Kallas admitted the plight of the Ukrainians on the front was “very serious” and European promises of extra weapons had not been delivered, something that could be rectified if Nato took charge of coordinating weapons delivery. “The problem is that our promises do not save lives,” she said.

Kallas is one of many European politicians trying to spell out the many negative consequences to Europe of a Ukrainian defeat, and rebut those who claim such a reverse could be contained.

She was speaking the day after the former Estonian president Toomas Ilves predicted that if Ukraine fell to Russia as many as 30 million Ukrainians would seek to flee. “That is the threat we face due to our inaction,” he said, adding that Europe had a “complete meltdown” when faced with 2 million refugees from the Middle East in 2015.

A pamphlet produced by pro-Ukrainian NGOs has detailed how Russian shelling between October 2022 and January 2023 had increased migration out of Ukraine by a quarter compared with the previous year.

The recent round of attacks has targeted electricity generation rather than transmission. Olena Halushka, board head at the international centre for a Ukrainian Victory, said: “Right now they are trying to bomb Ukraine into the stone age,” adding that in the past two months more damage had been inflicted than the whole of the winter of 2023.

She said: “Europe needs to think about Kharkiv, a city the size of Munich without energy this winter and then think about the financial implications of tens of millions of Ukrainians fleeing the war due to fear of occupation”.

Kallas said Russian assaults were now targeting Ukrainian cities every day and night.

She conceded that, based on geography and history, some countries in Europe did not see the threat of a Ukrainian defeat in the same way. “They don’t see and they don’t believe that if Ukraine falls Europe is in danger, the whole of Europe, maybe some countries, but not the whole of Europe”.

She said she feared a mistake was being made similar to the late 1930s, when linked conflicts were seen as isolated events. Kallas, tipped as a possible successor to Josep Borrell as EU high commissioner for foreign policy, cited links between the conflicts in Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Middle East, and the South China Sea. She said the same error was made in the 1930s about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the German occupation of Austria and the Sino-Japanese war.

“The lesson from 1938 and 1939 is that if aggression pays off somewhere, it will be taken up elsewhere. Ukraine’s defeat is something all aggressors will learn from. They will learn that in 2024, bluntly, you can just colonise another country and nothing happens to you.”

She pointed to what she described as baby steps to strengthening the European defence architecture, including a European defence fund, the increase in individual nation state defence spending, and the proposal for a shared defence debt bond to boost spending. She denied Estonia had had any serious discussions about sending troops to Ukraine, while arguing at the same time it was better to keep Putin guessing about Europe’s plans.

She said it was also a valid criticism that Ukraine was not moving fast enough to mobilise more troops.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign ministry warned the west it was playing with fire by allowing Ukraine to use western missiles and weapons to strike Russia, and said it would not leave such actions unanswered.

The foreign ministry said in a statement that it saw the hand of the US and Britain behind a recent spate of attacks, and blamed Washington and London for escalating the conflict by authorising Ukraine to use long-range rockets and heavy weapons they had supplied against Russian targets.

“Once again, we should like to unequivocally warn Washington, London, Brussels and other western capitals, as well as Kyiv, which is under their control, that they are playing with fire. Russia will not leave such encroachments on its territory unanswered,” the ministry said.

Reuters contributed to this report

CHURCH & STATE

‘Georgia is now governed by Russia’: how the dream of freedom unravelled

Daniel Boffey in Tbilisi
Fri, 17 May 2024 

Protesters Ekaterine Burkadze and her nephew Paata Kaloiani: ‘We have to protect our republic and our peaceful future in the EU.’Photograph: Daniel Boffey/The Guardian


The army of riot police had finally retreated from Rustaveli Avenue, the broad thoroughfare in front of the parliament building, back into the barricaded parliamentary estate.

The last hour on the streets of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, had been violent. Snatch squads had grabbed protesters as officers, beating their shields with truncheons, surged forward to push the chanting crowds away from the graffiti-scrawled, imposing parliament building.

It was Tuesday afternoon and the MPs inside needed to get out after passing the hated “foreign agents” law – which they did. But the police retreat, under a light shower of plastic bottles and eggs, was raucously cheered nonetheless. Then the crowd started to sing: “So praise be to freedom, to freedom be praise.”

It was the Georgian national anthem, Tavisupleba, or Freedom, a bitter sweet reminder to some of the older protesters of a time of great promise – and disappointment.

Tavisupleba, composed by Zacharia Paliashvili, was adopted in May 2004, along with Georgia’s new national flag and coat of arms. They were symbols of a new era after the non-violent Rose revolution swept away the corrupt Soviet hang-over administration of President Eduard Shevardnadze, a former Soviet minister of foreign affairs.

If then there was hope, now there is anger. The significance of the “foreign agents” law may seem arcane to those outside Georgia, but for those on the streets it is an attempt to smear dissenting western voices as traitors.

Civil society organisations and media receiving more than 20% of their revenues from abroad will have to register as “organisations serving the interests of a foreign power”.

The legislation is said to be part of an unravelling of all that has been achieved, albeit in fits and starts, since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Georgia has been protesting for 30 years,” said Ekaterine Burkadze, 45, as protesters’ horns sounded in the background and the rain fell. “But in the beginning they all seem more or less acceptable.”

Two decades ago it had been Mikheil Saakashvili, a US-educated and media-friendly ally of the west, leading the revolution. He became president with 96% of the vote but the support was genuine.

In his first term, his anti-corruption zeal and determination to bring Georgia closer to Nato and the EU won him accolades at home and abroad, and impressive economic growth.

By the second term, however, international monitors and domestic NGOs were warning of the growth of a kleptocracy and creeping authoritarianism. Saakashvili’s zeal and purpose, which had been so attractive, started to wear thin.

“The reforms were very top-down and they had to be fast,” said Ghia Nodia, who served as the minister of education and science in Saakashvili’s cabinet in 2008. “The idea was we don’t have too much time. There was a concentration of power and, of course, Saakashvili is a power junkie, if you will, and there was really no opposition.”

Related: The ‘foreign agents’ law that has set off mass protests in Georgia - podcast

Well-intended policies were executed in a manner that would store up long-term political problems.

Saakashvili wanted to reform Georgia’s universities, which were “rotting and corrupt”, said Nodia. Rectors were appointed by the ministry of education, academics forced to reapply for their jobs and institutions merged, all in a two-year frenzy.

The universities’ autonomy was restored but many intellectuals and opinion makers had been thoroughly disillusioned.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, after a confrontation between Tbilisi and Moscow over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, appeared on the face of it to replenish Saakashvili’s political stock.

When he announced a ceasefire after five days of conflict he was cheered by those who, a year earlier, had taken to the streets calling for his resignation.

But Russia continued to occupy 20% of Georgia. Saakashvili’s apparent disregard for upsetting Moscow would come to be portrayed by the opposition Georgian Dream party as reckless.

Then there was a major domestic scandal. Video footage emerged on the eve of the 2012 election, broadcast by the opposition-supporting channel TV9, that appeared to show a half-naked prisoner weeping and begging for mercy as two guards kicked and slapped him, before raping him with a broomstick.

Saakashvili called the incident “a horrific affront to human rights and dignity” and vowed to bring the guilty to justice.

Related: ‘We are very strong’: Georgia’s gen Z drives protests against return to past

The scandal spoke to a perception in Georgia that what had started as a “zero tolerance” approach to crime had warped into something far more sinister.

The mysterious billionaire and leader of Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, issued a statement condemning “these acts of torture by the Georgian government”.

In the election, Ivanishvili’s party swept to victory on a platform that promised to restore civil rights and reset relations with Moscow while pursuing EU membership.

Saakashvili accepted the voters’ decision, in the first peaceful democratic transition of power in Georgian history.

More ominously, the Kremlin welcomed the result. Few saw the creeping danger.

David Katsarava, 46, is in hospital requiring surgery for fractured cheek bones after a brutal beating by riot police during the violent hour on Tuesday before the national anthem was sung.

He is well known in Georgia for his work monitoring the “line of occupation” between Georgian-held territory and where Russian troops now sit.

Katsarava supported Georgian Dream in 2012. “We thought that with the changing of this government we can come back again in the right direction,” he said. “This was a big, big mistake. Nowadays, we see that Georgia is governed by Russian government.”

The story of the past 12 years has been of Georgia talking up its prospective membership of the EU while pursuing incompatible policies – and getting away with it, he said.

Nodia, who today runs a thinktank, said it was after 2018 – when it had briefly appeared that Georgian Dream’s preferred presidential candidate, and eventual winner, Salome Zourabichvili, might lose – that the Georgian government turned.

“I think Ivanishvili believed that the west was behind it,” Nodia said. “Ultimately, he wants to stay in power.”

Anti-western groups, some on the far right and not formally associated with Georgian Dream, started targeting the government’s critics in the streets or at protests.

Saakashvili, who had left Georgia shortly after the election, was convicted in absentia in 2018 for abuse of office and sentenced to six years in prison. He was arrested on his return three years ago and remains in detention.

Giorgi Kandelaki, who was an MP in Saakashvili’s United National Movement party, said the reset in US-Russian relations under the then US president Barack Obama provided the context for what has happened, with the west willing to accept Georgian alignment with Moscow – all the way up to the Ukraine war.

“Ivanishvili had been saying all these things for years, but no one wanted to listen,” Kandelaki said.

It was only when Russia invaded Ukraine that the Georgian government had to pick a side – declining to join the west in imposing sanctions. Even then, it was granted EU candidate status in December.

Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, who was in Tbilisi this week, conceded the EU was culpable in “managing the decline”.

“I’ve been here before,” Landsbergis said. “We were saying the same things about electoral law, about the way judges are appointed, about so many things, and no steps were taken. It was escalating and we didn’t meet that escalation.”

Back among the protesters, Burkadze and her 21-year-old nephew Paata Kaloiani are facing many more days and nights on the streets. “We protested at the Rose revolution, we protested against Saakashvili. Now we are here,” she said. “We have to protect our republic and our peaceful future in the European Union”.



VIPER AT THE NATION'S NECK

Thousands mark Family Purity in Georgia as anti-govt protests simmer

Reuters
Fri, 17 May 2024 





People mark Day of Family Purity in Tbilisi


TBILISI (Reuters) - Thousands of Georgians led by Orthodox Christian clerics marked "Family Purity Day" on Friday, marching down the same central avenue in Tbilisi that has been the scene of some of the fiercest anti-government protests in the country's history.

The contrasting groups staging the marches - pro-Orthodox and conservative on one side and pro-European on the other - spotlight the deep divisions within Georgian society as it grapples with an unprecedented political crisis.

For over a month, thousands of protesters, many of them young people, have filled Tbilisi's streets on a near-nightly basis to voice their opposition to a draft law on "foreign agents" they condemn as authoritarian and Russian-inspired.

The United States and the European Union have repeatedly warned the ruling Georgian Dream party to drop the bill, which protesters fear will harm the South Caucasus country's bid to join the European Union.

Dozens of rallygoers have been arrested or hospitalised since mid-April after police deployed water cannon and fired tear gas canisters and stun grenades to disperse the crowds.

By contrast, Friday's march received the tacit support of Georgian Dream, whose leading members including Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze took part.

Declared an official government holiday this year, the "Day of Family Purity and Respect for Parents" celebrates what the Georgian Orthodox Church calls the country's "family values" of marriage between a man and a woman.

LGBTQ rights are a contentious topic in Georgia, a traditionally Orthodox Christian country of 3.7 million.

Georgian Dream introduced a bill in March that would ban sex changes and adoption by same-sex couples, among other restrictions, a move seen by opponents as an attempt to boost its popularity ahead of elections later this year.

The Church began marking "Family Purity Day" in 2014, one year after an LGBTQ rights rally in Tbilisi was violently dispersed by crowds led by priests and conservative groups. May 17 is commemorated in many countries as the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.

On Friday, throngs of mostly families and elderly people paraded down Tbilisi's streets, brandishing Orthodox icons and Georgian flags.

Outside parliament, where just a few days ago protesters were led away by police, people queued for their turn to kiss a large icon held aloft by a priest clad in black robes.

"Today is a great day," said marcher Zviad Sekhniashvili, dressed in the traditional garb of Caucasian highlanders.

"Family is our fortress... That's why God created man and woman: to have a family, to have kids."

Other holidaymakers said they saw family as linked to the concept of the Georgian nation.

"Family is like a little state," a woman who gave her name as Mariam said. "If our family is good, it's good for the country."

(Reporting by Reuters in Tbilisi; Writing by Lucy Papachristou in London; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Net zero U-turns will hit UK infrastructure, say government advisers

Fiona Harvey, Gwyn Topham and Jillian Ambrose
Thu, 16 May 2024 at 12:00 am GMT-6·5-min read

Rishi Sunak’s changes to key policies had created uncertainty and delay, said Armitt.Photograph: UK Parliament/AFP/Getty Images


Rishi Sunak’s U-turns over net zero have delayed progress on vital infrastructure that is needed for economic growth, the government’s advisers have said.

Sir John Armitt, the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), said good progress had been made on renewable energy in the past five years, but changes to key policies, including postponing a scheme to boost heat pump takeup, had created uncertainty and delay.

He said the government could no longer “duck key decisions”, as Britain was falling behind on vital infrastructure, from rail transport and energy to water, flood defences and waste.


Failure to catch up would stymie economic growth, and imperil climate targets, the NIC found in its latest annual review.

Since last September, when he watered down key net zero policies, Sunak has repeatedly referred to the need to be “pragmatic” on net zero.

Armitt said: “I can understand the need to seek to be pragmatic, but every time you seek to be pragmatic you take your foot off the gas and you provide an encouragement to people to say: ‘Well, do I really need to do this?’

“The message clearly has to be that this is something we’ve got to do if we believe in our carbon targets.”

He said heat pumps in particular, which the NIC found to be the only viable alternative to gas boilers for home heating, must be a top priority.

The NIC found:

The government will fail to meet its targets on heat pump rollout.


The promised lifting of a ban on new onshore windfarms has not gone far enough.


Massive investment is needed in the electricity grid.


There is no proper plan for rail in the north and Midlands now that the northern leg of HS2 has been cancelled, severely inhibiting economic growth in those regions.


Water bills will need to go up to fix the sewage crisis, and more reservoirs are needed to avoid drought, while water companies have done too little to staunch leaks.


The UK lacks a coherent strategy on flooding, with more than 900,000 properties at risk of river or sea flooding and 910,000 at risk of surface water flooding.


Good progress has been made on the rollout of gigabit broadband around the country.

Armitt called for this government, and the next, to act swiftly. “It’s not too late to catch up in many of the areas we’ve highlighted, if the goals are matched with policies of sufficient scale. But the window is closing,” he said.

“Ducking big decisions over the next 12 months will put the major goals of net zero, regional economic growth, and environmental protection in jeopardy,” he warned.

Greater investment was needed in public transport, the NIC found. Uniquely in Europe, the UK’s second and third cities showed lower economic productivity than the national average, largely because of poor transport links, the review found.

The axing of the next phases of the HS2 high-speed rail project left a “critical gap” in rail connectivity between the Midlands and the north, with northern cities likely to “remain poorly served” without further investment.

Given long-term growth in demand “a do-nothing scenario north of the proposed connection of HS2 and the west coast mainline at Handsacre is not sustainable”, the report found.

The target of rolling out 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028 to reach 7m homes by 2035 was way off track, the report found, while putting off a decision on hydrogen for home heating until 2026 had created uncertainty.

The next government should end new connections to Britain’s gas network from 2025, and ban the sale of new gas boilers for homes and fossil fuel heating in large commercial buildings by 2035, according to the report. It also called on the government to rule out subsidies for hydrogen heating.Interactive

These commitments should be underpinned by steps designed to make heat pumps more affordable for households, including sufficient funding, and a plan to shift the burden of policy costs from electricity bills to either gas bills or into general taxation.

Armitt stopped short of calling for force-fitting heat pumps and smart meters in a street-by-street programme – put forward earlier this month by Chris O’Shea, the chief executive of British Gas parent company Centrica – saying it was difficult to do “from top down” while maintaining public trust. He added that other low-carbon home heating options – such as heat networks – should also be considered in areas where they made sense.

The greatest challenge to the UK’s green electricity goals, according to the review, is the need to upgrade the country’s transmission infrastructure. The bottleneck of renewable projects waiting to connect to the grid has already increased costs for households. By 2030, network constraint costs are estimated to rise to between £1.4bn and £3bn a year, unless grid capacity is expanded.

A government spokesperson said: “We’re making sure we have the infrastructure we need to grow the economy, improve people’s lives, and tackle climate change – having already increased electricity generated from renewable sources to nearly half in 2023, giving more powers to cities to build the transport they need, and providing billions to tackle potholes up and down the country.”


Window closing to deliver infrastructure that will improve lives, advisers warn

Emily Beament and Neil Lancefield, PA
Wed, 15 May 2024

The window is closing to deliver infrastructure to improve people’s lives, boost growth and tackle climate change, Government advisers have warned.

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) said there are “significant deficiencies” in the UK’s infrastructure, including a failure to build reservoirs, too many homes at risk of flooding and under-investment in regional transport.

Commission chairman Sir John Armitt said it is a critical period for making decisions on things that are of immediate concern to the public, which he characterised as the three Ps of “prices, potholes and pollution”.

The Government will need to increase public investment in infrastructure and boost private investment – which in a globally competitive market requires stable policy to attract investors, the commission argued.

The Government must make faster decisions and commit to them in the long term, with robust implementation plans and action to remove barriers that slow down delivery and increase the costs of infrastructure.

It has warned public funding will need to reach around £30 billion a year over the coming decades, from around £20 billion a year in the past decade, while private investment will need to rise to around £50 billion a year.

In an annual review of progress, the advisory body said the Government had faced several years of disruption from shocks such as the pandemic and the energy crisis.

It now needs to accelerate planning and delivery to catch up and ensure the country’s infrastructure is fit for purpose, to cut emissions to net zero, boost regional growth and make the UK more resilient to climate change.

Sir John said: “A window remains to ensure that practical delivery plans are in place, backed up by the necessary public and private funding, to help achieve economic and environmental goals that will improve life for British households.

“But the window is closing, at least if we don’t want to delay those benefits and compound the disruption of recent years.”

The commission said there are still unacceptably high levels of water pollution, and investment decisions are needed to enable “transformational change” in the sector – that would require some bill increases – to address sewage and drainage problems.

The commission warns the take-up of heat pumps for home heating systems has been too slow (Alamy/PA)

It called for action to enable new reservoirs, tackle too-high levels of leaks and reduce water demand, warning they are the only ways of reducing the risk of severe drought and avoiding consumers having to pay for emergency supply measures.

On flooding, the commission warned current funding is not being strategically directed, with no long-term targets to measure progress against.

Flood risk is worsening due to poor planning for new development and “unmanaged” growth in hard surfacing that stops water draining away.

The report also warned the UK remains “too reliant” on high cost, high carbon natural gas, but it could move away from fossil fuels and have decarbonised and secure energy.

Moving away from gas heating will be essential for reducing carbon emissions in homes, as well as improving air quality and permanently reducing heating costs for households, the report said.

The solution for cutting emissions from most homes is heat pumps, but the Government is not on track to roll out 600,000 of the clean heating systems a year by 2028, it said.

Last minute policy changes on heating have reduced the incentives for people to install heat pumps, while uncertainty over the role of hydrogen has also contributed to slow progress away from fossil fuel heating.

Sir John Armitt is chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission (PA)

The Government should rule out supporting hydrogen for heating and set out long-term funding and 0% financing to support deployment of heat pumps and heat networks, it argued.

The cost of electricity has to be rebalanced to make electric heating more cost effective, and there should also be further moves to boost renewables such as onshore wind projects.

On transport infrastructure, the NIC found Government plans for schemes to boost connectivity using money saved from scrapping HS2 north of Birmingham need “greater specificity” regarding their “scope, cost, benefits and schedule”.

The commission’s analysis also suggested there are “key corridors which will remain poorly served”, such as from Birmingham to Manchester and the rest of north-west England.

Capacity and connectivity north of Birmingham “cannot be materially improved” without further infrastructure investment, the report added.

Devolution needs to be expanded to give all local authorities with responsibility for local transport five-year funding settlements to enable more stable planning for road maintenance and other priorities

In a “mixed” report which highlighted good progress on the rollout of digital networks, there is also a warning that recycling rates have stagnated and emissions from waste remains too high, with a call for implementing reforms to meet the target to recycle 65% of rubbish by 2035.

James Heath, NIC chief executive, said the report reiterates a package of measures outlined in the commission’s second assessment last year for the next five years which is “deliverable and affordable”.

He added: “It’s the package that is necessary to close the gap in the UK between the infrastructure assets we have today and those we’re going to need in the future.”

A Government spokesperson said: “We’re making sure we have the infrastructure we need to grow the economy, improve people’s lives, and tackle climate change – having already increased electricity generated from renewable sources to nearly half in 2023, giving more powers to cities to build the transport they need, and providing billions to tackle potholes up and down the country.

“And we’re building on this by setting out our long-term plan for transport through our £36 billion Network North plan, while putting billions more investment into the low carbon transition, including through our Boiler Upgrade Scheme – which is one of the most generous in Europe.”

Tesla chair sees challenges in getting shareholder vote for Musk's pay package, FT reports

Fri, 17 May 2024 

(Reuters) - Tesla's chair of the board said the company needs to climb "Mount Everest" as it faces shareholder votes on relocating to Texas and CEO Elon Musk's $56 billion pay deal, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

Robyn Denholm, who has held Tesla's chairperson position since 2018, also dismissed criticism that she is too close to Musk, according to the report.

Last month, Denholm asked shareholders to reaffirm their approval of Musk's record-breaking $56 billion compensation that was rejected by a Delaware judge in January.

The board is in early days of the campaign and will meet with shareholders all the way through to the day of the vote, Denholm told the Financial Times.


The largest pay package in corporate America has no salary or cash bonus and sets rewards based on Tesla's market value rising to as much as $650 billion over the next 10 years from 2018.

"Every shareholder that I've ever talked to says that (the compensation plan) worked, Denholm said, adding that they appreciate that it drove a lot of shareholder value, according to the report.

Tesla's board has repeatedly come under fire for its close ties with the billionaire.

After the original pay package was voided by Judge Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware's Court of Chancery, Musk sought to move Tesla's state of incorporation to Texas from Delaware.

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

Protesters vow to keep up pressure on Tesla as it expands German gigafactory

Deborah Cole in Grünheide
Fri, 17 May 2024 

Environmental activists march in front of the Tesla plant in Grünheide, which plans to make 1m EVs a year.Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

Environmental protesters vowed to keep up the pressure on Tesla after failing to stop plans by Elon Musk’s company from expanding its sprawling electric vehicle plant outside Berlin.

The town council of Grünheide, guarded by police and plain-clothed security guards, gave the green light on Thursday to the US automaker after a heated, nearly three-hour debate disrupted by heckling and booing from the audience of about 200 people.

A scaled-back “compromise” scheme, which still needs the go-ahead from local environmental authorities, allows Tesla to enlarge the manufacturing facility and build new infrastructure to move logistics to rail lines and off local roads.

The company intends to double the capacity of the German site to 100 gigawatt hours of battery production and 1m EVs a year in the face of increasing Chinese competition in the European market.

The Tesla manager, Alexander Riederer, told the meeting that long term, the company would like to see 2m cars roll off the Grünheide assembly line each year. The gigafactory, the first Tesla operation of its kind in Europe, employs about 12,500 workers.

A week before the meeting, activists, who had set up a protest camp in the town where the factory is located, attempted to storm the Tesla premises during a rally of about 800 people, clashing with police. Musk, the Tesla CEO, criticised the response as too lenient on his social media platform X.

Related: Has Elon Musk driven Tesla off track?

The demonstrators, led by organisers Disrupt Tesla and supported by groups including Extinction Rebellion, argue that the enlarged site will cause damage to the local environment and threaten drinking water supplies.

They also object to the impact on local communities in countries such as Argentina and Bolivia wreaked by lithium mining required to produce electric car batteries.

Outside the gymnasium where the council meeting was held, about 50 activists held up banners reading “Water is a human right” and “People over profit”.

Participants had their bags inspected before entering the hall and security guards confiscated all water bottles.

The final vote – 11 in favour, six opposed, two absentions – was met with cries of “traitors!” and “we’ll remember!” and stunned silence among the demonstrators who later hugged and wept on the lawn in front of the building.

Tesla welcomed the vote, saying it would provide “reliability for planning” while preventing 1,900 lorry trips each day on local roads thanks to the rail option.

Esther Kamm, of the Turn Off the Tap on Tesla group, called the outcome a “catastrophe” and said protesters would not back down.

“There are still many stages to come where we can cause disruptions and we will call on people to bring their pressure to bear,” she said, suggesting civil disobedience as well as legal appeals.

“The town can still withdraw its approval or Tesla can say ‘we’re sick of all this resistance, it’s not worth it any more’.”

However, many residents welcomed the coming expansion as good for the 9,000 people in Grünheide, about 25 miles (40km) south-east of central Berlin.

“It frustrates me that the perspective you’re hearing here is so local, so not-in-my-back yard,” Bernd Rühl, 52, who works in the solar power sector.

Rühl described himself as a former environmental activist and said he named his 20-year-old daughter after Julia ‘Butterfly’ Hill, who lived in an ancient California redwood tree for two years to keep it from being felled.

He said he felt the protesters and local opponents failed to recognise the importance of the “transport transformation” away from Germany’s dominant car industry built on combustion engines.

“You can say what you want about Elon Musk – he’s a polarising figure – but electric cars are the much better alternative if you care about global climate protection.”

Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister of the Greens, criticised the Grünheide protests last week, saying that automobile manufacturing would remain a crucial component of Europe’s top economy for generations to come.

“No one can have an interest in a Germany without car production,” he told Funke media group. “We are trying to get the cars of the future built here so that we can keep the jobs and value creation here. Tesla is building those kinds of cars.”

Many of the protesters and residents said that the council’s vote had been “undemocratic” because it ran counter to a non-binding referendum in February. Citizens voted by a 62% majority with a large turnout at that time against Tesla’s plans.

As a result, the company put forward a more modest scheme including cutting down 47 hectares of pine forest – half of what was originally planned.

The protests, however, continued. The production site was shut down for a week in March after suspected arson cut off its power. A separate collective called Volcano group claimed responsibilit

Who are the Rohingya and what is happening in Myanmar?

Rebecca Ratcliffe

THE GUARDIN
Fri, 17 May 2024


Who are the Rohingya?

Described as the world’s most persecuted people, an estimated 600,000 Rohingya people live in Myanmar. They live predominately in Rakhine state, where they have co-existed uneasily alongside Rakhine Buddhists for decades.

Myanmar’s military governments have deemed the Rohingya illegal interlopers and subjected them to systematic discrimination, derogatorily referring to them as Bengali because of their darker skin and linguistic similarities to the people of neighbouring eastern Bangladesh.

But before the modern borders set after Myanmar’s independence from Britain, there were centuries of shifting frontiers between the historical Bengal and Arakan kingdoms and a long history of Persian and Arab commerce and political influence.

The Myanmar government treats them as stateless people, having stripped them of citizenship in 1982. Stringent restrictions have been placed on Rohingya people’s freedom of movement, access to medical assistance, education and other basic services.

What happened to them in 2017?

Violence broke out in northern Rakhine state on 25 August 2017, when militants attacked government forces. In response, security forces supported by Rakhine militia launched a “clearance operation” that killed at least 10,000 people and forced more than 700,000 to flee their homes, according to the UN.

Myanmar claimed the operations were in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa), an armed group which claims to fight for the rights of the Rohingya. However, a 2022 investigation by the nonprofit Commission for International Justice and Accountability revealed documents from several years prior showing plans to control and expel the Rohingya population.

The massacres, rapes and burning of villages were determined by the US to be part of a genocidal campaign and Myanmar is currently facing genocide charges at the International Court of Justice.Map Myanmar

Where are the Rohingya now?

The majority of the Rohingya now live in Bangladesh, where camps set up to host Rohingya escaping previous rounds of violence collectively host about 1 million Rohingya refugees. They arrived after long journeys, hiding in jungles and crossing mountains and rivers.

There has been no progress towards returning Rohingya to Myanmar, despite several attempts by Bangladesh to begin repatriations. Myanmar is no safer for the Rohingya than it was in 2017 and the government has not listened to their demands to have their citizenship restored.

Meanwhile, Bangladeshi authorities have made life in the camps uncomfortable, building a barbed wire fence that restricts Rohingya movement while also placing heavy limits on access to education and work.

The deteriorating conditions have seen many turn to traffickers to help them undertake dangerous migration routes to south-east Asia, where they believe they can live and work more freely than in the confines of the camps.

What’s the background to the story?

For decades ethnic tensions have simmered in Rakhine state, with frequent outbreaks of violence. An estimated 200,000 Rohingya fled military operations in 1978 and 250,000 in the early 1990s. Though many returned, refugee camps were established in Bangladesh that still exist today. In October 2016 nine police officers were killed by armed men, believed by officials to be Muslims. Amid the ensuing violence, 87,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh and government troops expanded their presence in Rakhine state.

At the time, a senior UN official alleged that the Myanmar government was seeking to rid the country of its Muslim minority – an accusation that has been made repeatedly by human rights groups. The government denied the charge.

The 2017 massacres followed a buildup of troops in Rakhine, which the military said was in response to finding seven Buddhists hacked to death, but Rohingya activists said was part of a longer-term plan to remove them from the country.

Around 600,000 Rohingya are thought to have remained in Rakhine, which has now become a major battleground between the military and the rebel Arakan Army, which says it fights for the rights of the Rakhine ethnic group. The Rohingya say they have become caught in between the two, being killed in the crossfire and pressured to fight for both sides.

What does the Myanmar government say?

The government has claimed that in 2017 it was targeting militants responsible for attacks on the security forces, and that the majority of those killed were terrorists. It also claimed the Rohingya burned their own villages – a claim questioned by journalists who reported seeing new fires burning in villages that had been abandoned by Rohingya people.

Before she was deposed by a military coup in 2021, the Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi disappointed her admirers by defending the military at the ICJ, rejecting the genocide claim and doubling down on the claim that it was responding to Arsa attacks.

The Rohingya have hoped for justice through international systems, but the ICJ case has progressed slowly. The military retook full power of the country in 2021 and now face rebellions on various fronts. The Rohingya are unsure how they would be treated under alternative governments, including the Arakan Army, because of the collaboration of their Rakhine Buddhist neighbours with the military in 2017.

Plaid Cymru withdraws from Welsh Labour partnership

Daniel Martin
Fri, 17 May 2024

The end of the agreement with Plaid Cymru is a blow to Vaughan Gething, the Welsh Labour First Minister - Francesca Jones/Reuters

The Labour-run government in Wales was thrown into crisis on Friday after Plaid Cymru pulled out of a cooperation agreement with the party.

The Welsh nationalists said they had decided to go following the campaign finance scandal of Vaughan Gething, the recently elected First Minister.

They said they were also angry about a string of policy reversals, as well as Mr Gething’s decision to sack a minister for leaking.

The agreement was established following the Welsh assembly elections in 2021 in which Labour gained 30 out of the 60 seats, one below a majority.

It ensured that Plaid would vote with Labour on a series of policy areas to ensure a majority in the Senedd, and was due to last until December.

Without Plaid Cymru to support it, Labour finds itself as a minority administration in Cardiff Bay, which may prove troublesome when it seeks to pass new laws.

Mr Gething has already been in office for eight weeks - a week longer than Liz Truss managed as prime minister in 2022.

Rhun ap Iorwerth, the leader of Plaid, said he remained “deeply concerned” over a donation made to the First Minister’s leadership campaign and was worried about Mr Gething’s decision to sack Hannah Blythyn, his minister for social partnership, following the leak of a phone message to the media which she insisted she was not behind.

“I am worried by the circumstances around the decision to sack a member of the Government this week relating to matters that should be in the public domain already,” he said.



Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, says he was worried about the First Minister's decision to sack a minister - Matthew Horwood/Getty Images Europe

Mr Gething said: “The cooperation agreement was about mature politics, working together on areas where we agree. While it was always a time-limited agreement, we are disappointed Plaid Cymru has decided to walk away from their opportunity to deliver for the people of Wales.”

The First Minister thanked Sian Gwenllian and Cefin Campbell, Plaid’s two designated members for the agreement.

“By working together we have achieved a great deal, including free school meals for all pupils in primary schools, providing more free childcare, introducing a radical package of measures to create thriving local communities, helping people to live locally and addressing high numbers of second homes in many areas of Wales,” he said.

“We will now look closely at how we can progress the outstanding co-operation agreement commitments, including the Welsh Language Education Bill and the White Paper on Right to Adequate Housing and Fair Rents.”

On Thursday, the First Minister said he had “no alternative” but to ask Ms Blythyn, Labour member for Delyn, to leave his government.

She insisted she was “clear and have been clear that I did not, nor have I ever leaked anything” and was “deeply shocked” at her dismissal.

It followed news reports which featured a message posted to a ministerial group chat in August 2020 by Mr Gething, stating that he was “deleting the messages in this group”.

Mr Gething previously told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry that lost WhatsApp messages were not deleted by him, but by the Welsh Parliament’s IT team during a security rebuild.

Sustained pressure

The Welsh Labour leader has come under sustained pressure in recent weeks, with repeated calls for an investigation into donations he received while running to be Welsh Labour leader.

Earlier this month, he survived a Senedd vote calling for an independent inquiry into a donation from a company run by a man twice convicted for environmental offences.

On Thursday, the BBC reported that more than £31,600 from Mr Gething’s leadership campaign would go to the Labour Party.

Andrew RT Davies, the Welsh Tory leader, told the broadcaster it is “odds on” there will be a no confidence vote in Mr Gething, following his turbulent time as First Minister since taking up the office on March 20.

Plaid Cymru’s withdrawal from the co-operation agreement could lead it to move against him in such a vote, but Tory leader Mr Davies was not forgiving of the Welsh nationalist party either.

“Together, Labour and Plaid have worked together to divert resources away from the people’s priorities and towards vanity projects like putting more Senedd Members in Cardiff Bay, and have been hand in glove on policies like the destructive sustainable farming scheme and 20mph.

“This move from Plaid means nothing and the Welsh public won’t be fooled,” he said

.Plaid Cymru ends Senedd cooperation deal with Welsh Labour in latest blow to Vaughan Gething

Andy Gregory
Fri, 17 May 2024 

Plaid Cymru has ended its cooperation deal in the Senedd with Welsh Labour, in the latest blow for newly-elected first minister Vaughan Gething – whose opponents claim could soon face a no-confidence vote.

The three-year deal had been due to end in December 2024 – but Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth announced on Friday that the agreement had been terminated with “immediate effect”.

Mr ap Iorwerth said he was proud of how the agreement had “demonstrated a new way of doing politics which focused on areas of policy which impact people’s everyday lives”.

But he cited “deep concerns” over donations to Mr Gething’s campaign, his decision to sack minister Hannah Blythyn on Thursday, and “the emerging approach of the government in relation to some elements of the co-operation agreement”, including the recent decision to delay Council Tax Reform.

The collapse of the deal comes after the Conservative Senedd leader Andrew RT Davies claimed it was “odds on” that a no-confidence motion to force the first minister’s resignation would soon be brought forward by opposition members.

Reacting to Plaid’s announcement on Friday, Mr Davies insisted the dissolution of the party’s Senedd agreement “means nothing” after three years working “hand in glove” with Welsh Labour “to divert resources away from the people’s priorities”, adding: “This attempt to save face will not work.”

Describing the co-operation agreement as being “about mature politics”, Mr Gething thanked the deal’s two designated Plaid members and said: “While it was always a time-limited agreement, we are disappointed Plaid Cymru has decided to walk away from their opportunity to deliver for the people of Wales.”

Mr Gething has come under sustained pressure in recent weeks, with repeated calls for an investigation into donations he received while running to be Welsh Labour leader prior to his election in March.

Earlier this month, he survived a Senedd vote calling for an independent inquiry into the £200,000 donation he took from a man convicted of environmental offences. And on Thursday, the BBC reported that more than £31,600 from Mr Gething’s leadership campaign would go to the Labour Party.

Vaughan Gething expressed his ‘gratitude’ to Hannah Blythyn for work she had undertaken as minister for social partnership (Ben Birchall/PA)

That news emerged as Mr Gething sacked his minister for social partnership Hannah Blythyn following the leak of a phone message to the media – which the “deeply shocked” MS for Delyn insisted she was not behind.

A report on the Nation.Cymru news website last week featured a message posted to a ministerial group chat by Mr Gething at the height of the pandemic in August 2020, stating that he was “deleting the messages in this group”.

Mr Gething previously told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry that lost WhatsApp messages were not deleted by him, but by the Welsh Parliament’s IT team during a security rebuild.

The first minister told plenary last week that the leaked message was from an iMessage group chat with other Labour ministers and related to internal discussions within the Senedd Labour group. He said the message did not relate to pandemic decision-making and denied that it contradicted his evidence to the inquiry.

Announcing the dissolution of the cooperation deal agreed in December 2021, Mr ap Iorwerth said on Friday: “I am proud of the way in which the agreement demonstrated a new way of doing politics which focused on areas of policy which impact people’s everyday lives.

“These include rolling out free school meals for all primary school pupils, expanding the free childcare offer for thousands more families, taking radical action to address the housing crisis, steps to safeguard the Welsh language, the creation of a national energy company Ynni Cymru and more.

“Working collaboratively was a constructive response to the chaos and uncertainty of Brexit and the Covid pandemic and the harm caused by the UK Conservative Government. We will continue to try to secure the delivery of policies agreed as part of the co-operation agreement.

But citing a determination to hold the Welsh Government “firmly to account”, he continued: “I remain deeply concerned that the First Minister has failed to pay back the £200,000 donation to his leadership campaign from a company convicted of environmental offences, and believe it demonstrates a significant lack of judgment.

“Money left over has now been passed on to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. I am worried by the circumstances around the decision to sack a member of the government this week relating to matters that should be in the public domain already.

“I am also concerned by the emerging approach of the government in relation to some elements of the co-operation agreement, including the decision to delay action in supporting the poorest families in our communities, as evidenced most recently by the decision to delay Council Tax Reform.”

Additional reporting by PA

UK government adviser on disruptive protest accused of conflict of interest

Damien Gayle
Thu, 16 May 2024 

John Woodcock’s review recommends an effective ban on at least two protest groups, naming Just Stop Oil as one. Photograph: Lucy North/PA

Activists have accused the government’s independent adviser on political violence of a conflict of interest, after it emerged that he had lobbying links to companies that would benefit from curbs to protesting.

John Woodcock, formerly a Labour MP and now a crossbench peer, has prepared a review of “far-left” involvement in disruptive protest, which includes activism against climate change and war. At the same time, he has been chairing and advising lobby groups representing arms manufacturers and fossil fuel firms.

Woodcock’s review is due to be released next week, more than three years after it was commissioned. Over the weekend he said that, among about 40 recommendations, it would propose bans on at least two protest groups, naming Just Stop Oil, the climate activist campaign, and Palestine Action, which acts against arms companies that supply Israel’s military.

Related: UK ministers consider ban on MPs engaging with pro-Palestine and climate protesters

The organisations could be proscribed, which would restrict their ability to raise funds and their right to assembly in the UK. The Guardian has yet to see a copy of the report.

Woodcock’s entries in the Lords’ register of interests show he is paid to act as the chair of the Purpose Business Coalition, an organisation run by the PR and lobbying firm Crowne Associates, which counts the oil company BP and the arms company Leonardo among its clients.

The register also shows he is a paid adviser to Rud Pedersen Public Affairs, another lobbying firm, which acts for Glencore, a Swiss mining company with interests in coal, and Enwell Energy, which describes itself as a “a highly focused oil and gas business”.

All could theoretically welcome restrictions on protest against their operations. Leonardo, in particular, has been subject to a persistent campaign of protest by Palestine Action, including occupations of its factories during which equipment was smashed, and graffitiing of the entrance to its London HQ.

Huda Ammori, an activist with Palestine Action who helped uncover the links, said: “Whilst our government remains complicit in the ongoing Gaza genocide, it is our duty to take direct action to halt the production of weapons in Britain which is being used against the Palestinian people.

“It is a sham for the government to try and claim Lord Walney is an ‘independent’ adviser.”

Tim Crosland, the director of Plan B, a climate litigation group, said that Walney’s recommendations were “not surprising, since they serve the vested corporate interests he represents”.

A spokesperson for Just Stop Oil said: “Last week the government’s climate strategy was declared unlawful for the second time. The same week they licensed 31 new oil projects. Our government has been bought by the fossil fuel lobby and arms dealers. It is increasingly clear that it is they who are the real criminals.”

Responding to the accusations, Woodcock said: “Over the three years that I have conducted this review I have consistently applied an objective standard and sought a wide range of perspectives, including through a formal call for evidence and analysis of public opinion through polling exercises.

“I now look forward to the publication of the independent analysis and recommendations in my extensive report. My non-parliamentary interests are declared as required and past positions held are a matter of record.”

Woodcock was a Labour MP until 2018, when he resigned from the party during an investigation into claims he had sent inappropriate text messages to a female aide, which he denied. He called for voters to back the Conservatives in 2019 and the following year, Boris Johnson made him a life peer.

Shortly after, he was appointed the government’s “independent adviser on political violence and disruption” and commissioned to write a review on protest in the wake of the Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter and anti-lockdown protests that had roiled the UK before and during the Covid pandemic.

Although it was nominally an investigation into “an increase in activity and prominence amongst far-right, far-left and other political groups”, he told the Telegraph at the time his focus would be on what he described as “progressive extremism”.

There was a blind spot on such activities, he said, because they were “carried out in the name of progressive causes to which the political establishment and large majority of the population have great sympathy, like climate change and racial injustice”.

Woodcock said he submitted his 100,000-word report, entitled Protecting our Democracy from Coercion, to officials in December, after a delay so he could take into account mass protests in London calling for Israel to end its campaign in Gaza.

In recent months he has trailed several of its recommendations to the press, including bans on face masks on protests, new police powers to end protests near parliament and MPs’ offices, and protest exclusion zones around arms factories and fossil fuel infrastructure.

But most controversial among its proposals are suggestions that the government enact a form of proscription on groups that regularly break the law as part of their protest strategies.

“The government should introduce a mechanism to restrict the activity of organisations which have a policy of using criminal offences … to influence government or public debate,” Woodcock’s report says, according to the Daily Mail.